


Women Hold the Power

by TheWinterSldier



Category: Agent Carter (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: BAMF Natasha Romanoff, BAMF Natasha Romanov, BAMF Peggy Carter, Gen, I just wanted an excuse to write about Natasha and Peggy meeting, I know this isn't what the time gem does, Rating May Change, Red Room, inaccurate description of the time gem
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-07-10
Packaged: 2018-04-08 14:04:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4307937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWinterSldier/pseuds/TheWinterSldier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha is sent on a mission by Fury to retrieve an object that was taken from SHIELD, but doesn't brief her on what it does, because of compartmentalisation. She grabs the Time Gem during an attack and is teleported back to the last time it was active. Which happened to be in Howard Stark's lab, in 1947.</p><p>She needs to get home, but only one person believes who she is and where she's from. Peggy Carter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Women Hold the Power

“You had one job, Clint! Land in the drop-off area we agreed on!” Natasha growled into her comm in irritation. Clint had panicked when there was a flash storm and landed too close to the area they needed to sneak into, close enough to give away the element of surprise. They had been attacked the moment the helicopter’s engine went off.

Clint had stayed behind to guard the helicopter against the enemy while Natasha went to get the cargo. Fury had sent them on a secret mission to Germany to recover an object that apparently went missing three years ago, but there had been rumours about it heard in Germany. It was supposed to be a quick sneak-in-sneak-out job.

Now, she had to manoeuvre through thick trees to get to the base the cargo was supposedly being held in. Natasha didn’t even know exactly what she was looking for. All she knew was that he was in a metal box and should be very heavily guarded. And there may be a decoy box. That one, Nick assured her, would be empty. So, she had to open the box and see if there’s anything in it, then close it again and bring the box with the item in back to the helicopter for Clint to fly them back to the states.

He hadn’t even told her what it did. Nick’s secretive nature was starting to get on her nerve. She understood, of course she did, but it didn’t stop it from annoying her when she can’t know all the details of her own mission. Now she understood why Steve was always complaining.

Natasha used her knife to cut through some vines and found a clearing with a metal bunker sticking up from the ground. The problem was, there was no one outside it. That seemed suspicious.

“Clint, I found a bunker. The cargo will probably be in there. Get the chopper ready.”

Clint confirmed that he heard her and said good luck before the comms went dead.

Natasha drew her gun and kept it high as she advanced towards the bunker. The door was locked, unsurprisingly, and Natasha checked the area around her for anyone hiding before holstering her gun and taking out her lock picking kit. It took her barely ten seconds to get the door unlocked and she quickly got her gun out before opening the door, pointing the barrel into the darkness and keeping her body to one side. The light streaming in from outside allowed her to see torches set up along the walls leading down a stairwell.

 _How cliché…_  Natasha thought as she shook her head and took one from the wall.

She took a lighter out of the pocket on her belt to light it, then put the lighter away and took her gun out again as she walked down the stairs. Her boots clicked slightly on the stone steps and she rolled her eyes. She really needed to talk to Fury about her uniform. And persuade him to include more damn pockets.

She got to the bottom of the steps and looked around the room to check for people hiding in corners before stepping into it. This room was empty too and Natasha frowned as she stepped further into the room, still on high alert. She had had plenty of experience with people jumping out of seemingly nowhere, heavily armed and ready to kill, she wasn't taking any chances. There were three doors in front of her in the room, and she sighed into the darkness yet again, her breath causing the flame of the torch to flicker a little.

_Another cliché. Great. Bet one of the doors has tigers behind it or something._

This shouldn’t be too hard to figure out, though. All she had to do was see which door was used the most. She debated doing eeny meeny miny moe and couldn’t help a small smirk as she imagined Clint’s expression if he saw her doing that.

Instead, she crouched slightly and held the torch down, close to the ground. The middle door had the most dirt kicked up around it, so that must be the one she needed. The redhead stood up again and checked her magazine, balancing the torch carefully, then pushed the door open and pointed her gun into the room.

 _Empty?_  Natasha frowned, slightly disappointed. She hadn't had a good fight in way too long, and she was itching to get at least a few punches in before she was back in the states doing small-time clean up missions with Steve. Natasha loved working with Steve, but sometimes she had to admit his righteousness got on her nerves. He was always making sure no one died unnecessarily, which Natasha was all for. But sometimes she just wanted to let out a little frustration. She didn't kill unnecessarily, but sometimes just a few extra blows wouldn't hurt.

Well... It wouldn't hurt her.

The lack of guards was suspicious, so she kept her guard up as she looked around the door. She checked for any doors or places to hide, but the room was just a large semi-circle of solid walls with a pedestal right in the middle, a small metal box stood on top of it.

 _Just like Raiders of the Lost Ark._ She commented in her head as she walked over to the box. There were no security traps she could trigger either.  _This is way too easy…_

Just as she opened the box, she heard shouting before she could even lay eyes on the contents and she sighed.  _Okay, maybe not so easy._   _But at least I can release a little tension._

She spun round as men poured into the room and was able to take down ten with one bullet each, using the pedestal for cover as the last three started firing at her and screaming in German. She checked her magazine again and saw that she was already out of bullets. Natasha decided she also needed to talk to Fury about the weapons she was being issued.

The three men left had better guns, and they were apparently not running out of bullets soon. Natasha decided she could wait until they stop to check if they got her, then jump out at the one of the right. He looked the weakest, so she could knock him down with just her body weight, then take the gun from him and take all three of them down. The backup plan was to rush at one of them, then if he didn’t go down, just keep running in zig zags to avoid the bullets until she was at a good distance, then throw her flash bomb in the room to blindside them.

But first, she needed whatever was in the damn box. She was  _not_  going through all this to go home empty handed. She could almost hear the disappointed sigh from Fury and the order to brief Rogers so he could get the job done. Natasha tried to think back to what was in the box. She hadn't been able to see it properly. Just a glance. But whatever it was, it was small. Maybe small stone?

Natasha was risking her life for a stone.

She  _really_  needed to talk to Fury. If she knew why this stone was so important, maybe she could use it to her advantage. Maybe bargain for it? Come up with an equal trade. That was hard to do when you don't know the exact value of the thing you want, or why you want it beyond ' _My boss wants it'._

The rein of bullets slowed and finally came to a stop, so Natasha held her breath and remained as still as possible to give the impression that she was down.

She timed it perfectly. She could hear the slight metallic click of the guns being lowered and knocking against the knife holster on the men's belts. She could hear the little shuffling of the sand under heavy boots as the men slowly advanced toward where she was crouched behind the pedestal. Just before the men were close enough to see her over the top of or around the pedestal, Natasha's hand shot up to reach into the open container to grab the small stone. It was barely the size of her palm, and her fingers closed around it easily. All she had to do now was drop the bomb and run.

But as soon as her hand came into contact with what was in the box, she felt pain shoot up her arm. She retracted her hand quickly and saw blood leaking from a wound in her forearm, but that wasn’t what was causing her the most pain. The most pain was coming from her hand. It felt like her palm was in fire, scorching the shape of the stone into the skin, but she couldn’t let go. It felt like the muscles in her hand had seized up to force her fingers to remain curled around the stone.

She gritted her teeth and refused to scream. She registered the sound of men shouting around her, but she couldn't concentrate on that. She should be worried, she should be reacting, protecting herself from the men stood barely a foot either side of her, but she couldn't. Natasha looked down and saw a bright light enveloping her arm. The light was blinding, but she couldn't look away. The light crept up her skin, and everywhere the bright white light touched felt like her nerves were being electrocuted a thousand times a second. The light travelled along her chest and Natasha tried scooting along the floor, her pain-clouded mind trying to convince her that she could get away from it. But the stone was still in her hand, and she still couldn’t let go of it. The light covered her torso and her other arm, then travelled down her legs and up her neck. Right before it encompassed her completely, she couldn't help but let out a loud scream.

She thought she heard Clint cry out her name, but she couldn’t be sure.

Natasha felt like every atom in her body was being torn away from the others, scattered, and shoved back together. She couldn’t see, smell, or hear. All she could feel was the stone still clenched in her palm. She couldn’t even feel the gunshot wound, or any blood leaking down her arm. Natasha felt like she should be hyperventilating, but she wasn’t breathing. But she didn’t feel like she was suffocating, or being strangled, she just didn’t need to breathe. She couldn’t turn her head, she couldn’t feel her legs or her left arm. All she could feel was the stone.

After what felt like an eternity, all her senses rushed back to her. The first thing she felt was the sudden need to breathe. She dragged in a deep breath and felt cold concrete beneath her knees. The fire in her hand had faded, leaving the stone freezing cold. She was sweating, and she fell forward to place her hands on the floor, heaving in breath after breath to overcompensate for the lack of oxygen. She could smell motor oil and burnt metal and briefly wondered if she had somehow ended up in Tony’s lab. Maybe she had passed out and Clint had brought her back to the tower. Maybe she was in medical and Tony had just set fire to something in the lab next door.

No, if she was in medical someone would have patched her wound up, but she could feel the blood dripping down her arm and over her wrist. She was still in her SHIELD uniform, too.

Then, she registered footsteps and people shouting. Natasha looked up and saw a group of men in 40s military clothes surrounding her with guns pointed at her. She recognised the uniform from old pictures of Steve and his old friends. The Howling Commandos, Peggy Carter, Bucky Barnes, Howard Stark.

Natasha shook her head a little to clear those thought and concentrate on the present. All the men around her looked confused, and slightly scared, but none of them fired at her. Natasha forced herself to look as innocent as possible as she stared up at them, then looked at the guns and faked a scared expression. Her bottom lip trembled, but she herself wasn't sure if that was part of the act or a result of the pain. Maybe her whole body was shaking. She wasn't quite fully aware of her body yet.

“Fellas! Fellas!” A skinny man wearing a pair of slacks with a white shirt and dark waistcoat pushed through the army men. One tried to stop him and keep him behind the line of protection, but he shrugged his hand off his arm. “Ease up, you’re scaring the lovely lady!”

Natasha looked directly at the man for the first time, who was now staring down at her with what he must have thought was a friendly smile. But Natasha felt a wave of annoyance flare up as she saw that smile, and didn’t know exactly why until she realised who the man looked like. He had Tony’s smile, that’s why it automatically pissed her off.

Then she recognised the man altogether.  _Howard Stark. A very young Howard Stark…_

Natasha stared at him in confusion. He looked younger than Tony…

“What year is this?” Natasha asked, but before Howard could reply, female voice with a British accent sounded around the lab they were in.

“At ease, Gentlemen!”

The men hesitantly lowered their guns, and a brunette with brown eyes and bright red lipstick stepped in front of them, standing beside Howard Stark.

“Stark, what did you do?” Ste rolled her eyes as she looked between him and Natasha, glaring at him as though whatever had happened was certainly his fault.

As her eyes settled on Natasha, a frown tugged at her lips. Natasha noticed that she was looking at her clothes with a look of confusion. The other woman was dressed in a blue blazer with a matching blue pencil skirt and a white shirt.

Natasha instantly recognised her. Of course she recognised her. She had read this woman’s file, seen pictures of her, heard stories out her. Both official, and personal stories from Steve.

Natasha had looked up to this woman since she had joined SHIELD. If he wasn’t for her, Natasha probably wouldn’t have wanted to join SHIELD as much as she did when Clint had first asked her to join instead of having to kill her. She probably still would have joined SHIELD. She still wanted to clear away all her sins and right all her wrongs, but reading this woman’s file had definitely helped nudge her in the right direction. She was an icon.

_Peggy Carter…_

 


End file.
